Book Reviews

Legal Intelligence and Law Firm Competition in the Global Economy: A Review of Recent Research and Intelligence Tools. Multiple Titles.

Within the global economy, law firms from the major industrialised countries now compete for business, and national law is no longer a both protective, but also limitative constraint for legal practice. In this competition, what counts is, mainly, the legal expertise to serve client needs, and this in turn means both skill in obtaining relevant legal, financial and commercial intelligence and competence in using and applying it.

Law firms - in particular outside the US and the Anglo-Saxon world - are as a rule traditionalist: They rely on relatively small in-house libraries, use public (mainly university) libraries for in-depth research and experience great cultural difficulties in appreciating the potential of electronic and in particular internet-based intelligence. This is different in the United States and it is perhaps not surprising that US law firms have a significant advantage in staking positions in international legal services. The four books on internationally-oriented legal research published by Oceana and the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) illustrate the amount of intelligence available, the skills required to obtain and use it and the explosive nature of electronic and internet-based information services - with most of the issues and techniques discussed in these quite recent books already obsolete. These four tool-books for international legal research also illustrate the high quality of American law librarians, a usually doubly qualified breed with extensive resources - and with a great emphasis on provision of research services - rather than merely library administrators. The four books derive from annual conferences of the AALL; they aim at providing an introduction, understanding, basic training in the main issues of (mainly) international business law. While consistent editorship and a standard format are not the strong points of this series, the general idea is that an issue is introduced by a substantive specialist and then followed-up by a selective and annotated bibliography. The researcher is therefore expected to learn how to go about researching in a particular field and topic and and to get an efficient entry into the main research techniques, reference services, monographs, journal articles, databases and - increasingly - internet and electronic research techniques.

The first - and in my view most difficult - book focuses on international organisations (Louis-Jacques & Korman). It is mostly a collection of US law librarians (at senior level usually also law professors) and some academics articles on research and documentation. Unfortunately, the multiplicity, complexity and confusion of the UN system has captured most space. Other international organisations (EC; Council of Europe; OAS; NAFTA) get much less space, and important other ones (World Bank system; MERCOSUR; ASEAN and the host of other specialised international organisations is barely mentioned. Wading through several librarians efforts to understand and to present with some clarity the UN documentation system illustrates in principle that much of the documentation is probably wasteful and to select what one needs difficult. UN-related formal research must have an element of masochism. In addition, given the absence of strong editorship, there is a large amount of duplication. I found Wiltrud Harms (Berkeley) survey of UN bibliographic and background tools most helpful; much of the discussion of available UN and EC databases seems dated - in view of these organisations now existing and ever expanding internet homepages. It would have been better if one author had taken the several papers on one organisation and made sense out of them. Very helpful are the subscription/useage instructions for the very active internet-based interest groups: Int-Law (mainly US law librarians - with quite some bias against US law professors emerging sometimes); Euro-lex - mainly younger European lawyers asking specific questions about national laws in Europe. One would add, today, the international economic law forum listserver (ASIL/IELG) and perhaps CEPMLP/Dundee's internal listserver ENATRES (energy and natural resources).

The next work (Danner/Bernal) on Foreign legal systems is better organised. There are reasonable chapters on common law/civil law (Bruno, Zaphiriou), on Comparative Law (Wade) and on a number of - somewhat haphazardously selected country/countries sections: France - Mexico - Asian legal systems - Japan - China - Taiwan - Africa) followed by foreign law librarians tales on difficult acquisition techniques. A useful section dealing with about 40 specific countries follows. The Library of Congress plan to develop, with World Bank support, a global legal information system is briefly discussed. Sections follow on library classification methods, in particular of the Library of Congress. The main advice given is that even the Library of Congress can no longer bring together all of the world s legal publication and that global internet-based research, professional and collegial networks are the major trends. This volume is easier to use than the previous one, but again it reflects the annual-conference approach with not this well coordinated presentations. It is certainly useful if dealing with comparative law and if starting to obtain legal intelligence on particular countries. There is an air of optimism about easy understanding of foreign legal systems, and this may reflect the positive nature of our US colleagues.

Raisch/Shaffer - Introduction to Transnational Legal Transactions - focuses on what could be called the "General Part" of international business transactions. It follows more strictly the sequence of substantive introduction followed by annotated and selective bibliographical survey. Transnational litigation, including forum shopping, international criminal law (particular with respect to US law - foreign corrupt practices; transborder and in particular security frauds; money laundering) starts; a quite idiosyncratic advocacy of a particular conflict-of-laws theory by Patrick Borchers is out of place - and one would have liked a less historical, more contemporary, more representative and thereby useful literature and issues survey in the field. Harmonisation of private law is discussed and literature surveyed in a professional manner (Winship - Rudolf) with an interplay of professor with librarian. Family law, intellectual property law (Jonathan Pratter), environmental law and trade is followed by intenrational commercial arbitration, the latter one with a country-specific survey. Some references (mining law - multinational corporations) are out of place, can not compete with the in-depth treatment in the last volume (infra) and do not represent the literature available.

The last book in the series (Seer/Smolka-Day) is in my view the most useful. In the - helpful - sequence of substantive introduction followed by a librarian s annotated bibliography, it deals with major international transactions: Joint Venture, "doing business in foreign countries" by Victor Essien - an excellent survey focusing on the various countries, special legal issues (renegotiation; ethical; environment; financial; arbitration; trade). Here, major contract forms are dealt with - though one would want to find much more on current relevant legal practice such as BOT and project finance agreements or agreements from particular industries (e.g. in natural resources/energy: Joint operating; bidding; take-or-pay agreements) or major forms of business activity (e.g. mergers and acquisition). Useful other sections deal with US regulation of international trade, antitrust, intellectual property law (repeating the previous volume s survey), international taxation, labour law plus a suggestion for core publications in internaitonal business law - trade, agency, franchise, joint ventures, securities, finance, environment, compmetition and intellectual property law (again with considerable duplication). A very stimulating and modern conclusion on "serving a law firm s global information needs" follows which tries to develop a (even cost-conscious) strategy of developing techniques for selective, economic and network-based international legal intelligence - the "library without borders".

The books are certainly useful. They reflect the great zeal and competence of US foreign law librarians. Their electronic/internet sections - as advanced as they must have been at the time of writing - are, however already obsolescing rapidly. Oceana and the editors would have benefitted from putting a greater effort into editing - editing the sections in each book and editing the books in the series. There are numerous repetitions which should have been avoidable. It is also surprising, given the professional interest of law librarians, that these books come neither with an index nor with a searchable diskette or CD-Rom. A one-author re-edition would make a lot of sense. If I would choose among the books, I would proceed as follows: For a University library dealing with international law, all four volumes are relevant, though the obsolescence and repetition is a cause of concern. For a law firm, the last three works, in descending order of priority (i.e. starting with the Seer/Smolka-Day book) make sense, both to help younger and not yet specialised lawyers and to have some guidance for fields outside the firm s specialisation. In one s own specialisation (e.g. natural resources & energy/international investment in my case), one should not need them, except for rounding up and helping younger colleagues.

Gitelle Seer/Mraia Smolka-Day, "Introduction to International Business Law: Legal Transactions in a Global Economy", Oceana, New York, 1996 ISBN 0-379-21364-8; 294 pages.
Marylin Raisch/Robert Shaffer, "Introduction to Transnational Legal Transactions", New York, Oceana 1995; 361 pages; No index; ISB N 0-379-21352-4.
Richard Danner/Marie-Louise Bernal, "Introduction to Foreign Legal Systems", Oceana, New York:1994; ISBN 0-379-21350-8; 420 pages.
Lyonette Louis-Jacques/Jeanne Korman, "Introduction to International Organizations", Oceana, New York:1996, ISBN 0-379-21351-6; 573 pages.

T. Wälde, CEPMLP/Dundee